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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
All NSW	(General)	(General)	(General)

Topic Date User

Shackles and the sheriff of Shipley 21-Apr-2011 At 7:48:37 AM hotgemini

Message

I'll add my voice to the chorus. YES, it matters. Fixed hardware wears comfortable faster than most people think. Anything down to 12 months for 10mm hardware to go from brand new to terrifyingly worn depending on the usage levels and whether or not people toprope through it.

With Kangaroo Point in Brisbane, since I (the sheriff of KP) and half a dozen other people have been letting people know that its not acceptable to toprope through the fixed hardware (~3 years now) we've seen an observable decrease in the rate of wear, and that itself is pretty amazing given that you're talking millimetres. Hardware which by it's previous rate of wear would have needed to have been mid-09 is only now approaching scary levels of wear.

I've also grown a bit tired of the "but he/she is only new" or "but he/she probably won't make it to the anchors" excuses as to why some selfish folks consider it acceptable to abuse a community resource (to which they've rarely made a significant contribution). One or the other of those excuses could probably be applied to 15-20% of the users of shipley and when you run the numbers, that markedly shortens the life of the anchors.

I'm just glad we've finally found someone who is willing to fund it so we can all top-rope directly through the fixed hardware at the blackheath crags. Working off an estimate of say 200 high traffic routes, an average lifespan of 2 years (if they last that long now that you're paying so we can all toprope through them) and using a pair of the excellent Climbing Technology Stainless Captive Wiregates on each anchor, if you could please just forward $4000 per annum to some nice third party rebolting fund (SRC? Climbing Anchors?) and we'll get the ball rolling.